It's not how far you go but how go you far.

June 11, 2009

Kristof on Canadian Health Care

Because the strongest weapon against better health care is vague anecdotes from distant relatives about bad experiences with the Canadian system, here's a counterexample:

Perhaps you’ve seen those television commercials denouncing health
care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian
nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.

Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack
Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us.
That seems unlikely now, but what if he’s a covert Canadian plotting to
impose ... health care?

Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the
government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to
block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials
of “real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care.”

So here’s a far more representative “real-life story.”

Diane Tucker, 59, is an American lawyer who moved to Vancouver,
Canada, in 2006. Like everyone else there, she now pays the equivalent
of just $49 a month for health care.

Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office
computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her
right hand.

“I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out,” she remembered. “But I had trouble standing.”

A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.

“An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me
straight upstairs to the CT scan,” she recalled. A neurologist
explained that she had suffered a stroke.

Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. “The doctors were great,
although there were also a couple of jerks,” she said. “The nursing
staff was wonderful.”

Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren’t as
opulent as at some American hospitals. “The food was horrible,” she
said.

Then again, the price was right. “They never spoke to me about money,” she said. “Not when I checked in, and not when I left.”

Scaremongers emphasize the waits for specialists in Canada, and
there’s some truth to the stories. After the stroke, Ms. Tucker needed
to make a routine appointment with a neurologist and an ophthalmologist
to see if she should drive again. Initially, those appointments would
have meant a two- or three-month wait, although in the end she managed
to arrange them more quickly.

Ms. Tucker underwent three months of rehabilitation, including
physical therapy several times a week. Again there was no charge, no
co-payment.

Then, last year, Ms. Tucker fainted while on a visit to San
Francisco, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital. But
this was in the United States, so the person meeting her at the
emergency room door wasn’t a doctor.

“The first person I saw was a lady with a computer,” she said,
“asking me how I intended to pay the bill.” Ms. Tucker did, in fact,
have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek
reimbursement.

Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.